xJonQx

In HD Pro 2020, how can you rotate Geometric Shapes (this works fine for other library items) on the Z-Axis? I'm trying to rotate a vertical cylinder to show the path of a main water line but it doesn't result at all in what I wanted. Here you can see me trying to rotate it in the camera view: But it winds up skewing the object instead of rotating it: This seems like such a basic operation but I can't figure out how to do it with a geometric shape. This works for other library objects like furniture. I was able to get a gutter downspout to rotate the way I needed: Can anyone explain to me how to achieve this with Geometric Shapes? Or a clever workaround with another object? (I tried using a flagpole for a pipe but it's too tapered when you shorten it) Thanks, Jon

Donco, This is actually pretty easy and doesn't require any trial-and-error (or even a calculator!) to be precise. The basic rule of thumb for spacing lights is that the distance from a light to the nearest wall should be half of the distance between 2 lights. Eg: https://blog.recessedlighting.com/recessed-lighting-calculator/ The way I build my grid is as follows: First, I create a CAD Box and fill the space I want to light (from wall surface): I modify the fill to be Solid Green 50% Transparent - obviously you can style this how you want, but the transparency helps in the next step. Here's what it looks like: I then copy-and-paste the green box (location at this point doesn't matter), and then open the box to modify it's specification: (initial size) Then, I divide the Height and Width by the number of lights I plan to place in each dimension. You can do the math right in the Height & Width boxes -- no calculator needed! When you tab to the next field, you'll see the new calculated value is entered: and finally: Now you have this: Next, duplicate the small rectangle (location at this point doesn't matter), and divide the height and width by 2: So now you have this: Here's where it gets fun. Use the Point to Point Move tool to move the upper-left corner of the smallest box to the upper-left corner of the room box: From: To: (notice i'm selecting the wall surface) Now you have this: Notice why the transparent fill helps. You can see where these overlay clearly. Next, create a copy of the mid-sized box, and point-to-point move the upper-left corner of that copy to the lower-left corner of the small box: Now keep copying the mid-sized box and moving it until you get the grid completed: Notice you don't need to create a full grid of boxes, you just need to make sure you have a box corner where each light would be placed. Just in case you don't believe this worked precisely, i've duplicated the corner box to the other 3 corners to prove it fits perfectly: But you do not need to do this last step typically. The last step is you place your lights, snapping the center to each corner of the grid: Repeat this process for the foyer: And the end result: (of course, don't forget to tune your light data, the camera PBR settings and the sun intensity described earlier in this thread). One other note is that in rooms where there are cabinets etc. you probably want to space your lights relative to the cabinet faces rather than the wall. ALTERNATE METHOD (especially if you have a large grid): There is another way to do this which doesn't require the CAD grid, but does require a little math. I still prefer the grid method since it gives me a frame of reference to make it clear if i accidentally moved a light later on etc. but this alternate method works just as well, and is probably much easier for large lighting arrangements. Measure the wall-to-wall height and width of the room you want to grid with lights. In my Example that's 252" x 348" Divide this by the number of lights you want in each dimension. I'll do something much more complex this time, with a 7x10 grid of lights. That results in a light-to-light spacing of 36" (Y) x 34.8" (X) Divide the light-to-light spacing by 2, resulting in a light-to-wall spacing of 18" (Y) x 17.4" (X) Place a light in the upper-left corner of the room: Select that light and choose the Transform/Replicate Object tool Move the light by the light-to-wall spacing you calculated: Select that light again and choose the Transform/Replicate Object tool again. This time Copy it 9 times (giving a total of 10 across the width of the room) and Move it just in the X-Axis by the light-to-light spacing you calculated: Now you have 10 lights across: Select all 10 lights, and choose the Transform/Replicate Object tool again. This time Copy it 6 times (giving a total of 7 down the height of the room) and Move it just in the Y-Axis by the light-to-light spacing you calculated: Now you have 7 rows of 10 lights: and voilà!: Combine the two methods! You can also use the Transform/Replicate Object tool to quickly build your CAD grid. I'm not a lighting designer by any stretch of the imagination, so clearly this post is more about the process of how to place lights according to a grid, but in many cases you'll want to deviate from a simple grid and have task lighting etc. Let me know how this works for you! -Jon

Donco, I don't use the lighting calculator to tell me how much lighting I need, rather how many foot candles i'd get with a certain configuration. The kitchen is 114 sqft, So with 8x 1200lm bulbs, that comes out to 84fc which i'd say is right in range, especially if you add under-counter lights. To add under-counter lights to HD Pro 2020, I added a 4" recessed light, resized it to 2.5", changed the lumens/cutoff/dropoff (total guesses - you'll need to set these properly), and then offset them from the ceiling: You'll have to play with the offset for each light depending on where you place them, as it could be relative to the ceiling, or soffit etc. Note that i just placed these willy-nilly for the example. Here's some renders with some under-cabinet lights thrown in: Note that you had some issues with your main recessed lights. One can had 2 lights in it somehow, and they didn't all have the same light data. I normalized them all. I don't know if you placed your main lights based on where they already are, but I moved them to the typical placement ratios relative to the wall just to see what that overlap would look like. I use CAD boxes to create a grid and then just snap the lights to the intersection points: This is a handy calculator to determine spacing: https://blog.recessedlighting.com/recessed-lighting-calculator/ Hopefully this gets you started on getting the look you're after! I look forward to seeing the renders when you're done. Good luck, Jon galt_towers_FRIDGE_SAME_SIDE_-_vJH.plan

Donco15, I'm curious if you have enough foot candles for that space. Depending on who you ask, kitchens should have 20-50 fc for general lighting, and 50-100 for task lighting (food prep, above the sink, above the stove etc.) Here's a calculator where you can enter the dimensions of the kitchen and the total lumens for the bulbs you've place to see how many foot candles that equates to: https://www.omnicalculator.com/everyday-life/lighting I think that if you had lighting above the sink and under the cabinets it would look very different. I'd be happy to play around with the PBR in your plan to see if I get better results. When I don't have any outside light I just turn the sun off altogether. The render seems to auto-expose for a combination of the sun and the internal light, so adjusting the sun's intensity didn't change the exterior render's brightness, but relatively speaking caused the interior lighting to be darker as the sun's intensity increased. Can you post or plan (or even better, if it's small enough, do a Backup Entire Plan): I'll take a look at it. Regards, Jon

Thanks solver! I like the floor camera since my plan has HVAC ducts and pipes between the floors which sometimes I want to show without the floors above:

I've gotten some great renders with PBR in 2020, so I documented the various default settings I changed to achieve my results. Hopefully one of these settings may help others who come across this thread. Please see this post for details: https://hometalk.chiefarchitect.com/topic/5020-physics-based-rendering-what-am-i-doing-wrong/?do=findComment&comment=26552

I've gotten some great renders with PBR in 2020, so I documented the various default settings I changed to achieve my results. Hopefully one of these settings may help you. I suspect that lowering the Sun Intensity may address your issue. I had to lower mine to 100 lux to get a good interior/exterior light balance. Please see this post for details: https://hometalk.chiefarchitect.com/topic/5020-physics-based-rendering-what-am-i-doing-wrong/?do=findComment&comment=26552 Let us know if that helped.

Anyone know how to get the floor camera for HD 2020? It seems to have been removed as only Full remains. What's wierd is if I open a HD 2019 plan which has a saved floor camera in HD 2020, the floor camera with as expected. Thanks

In the settings I gave you, I did not show reflections enabled since there's currently a bug when rendering 360 panos if reflections are on. This bug doesn't affect regular renders. You'll still get some reflective surfaces with it off, but I think you get more with it on. I haven't experimented much with that yet, but you should probably turn it on.

Awesome that you were able to get this to work! Those look great! There are definitely other settings you can further tune this with: Hardware Edge Smoothing, Global Illumination, Reflections etc. -- just tune until you get the look you want. Did you adjust your light fall-off? I bet you at a higher value this will look even smoother. Also note that the light cut off angle isn't the same as the beam width you'll see on your light's packaging. Cut off is where there is zero light bleed, while the beam angle is some vendor value where the lumens drop below x% of the max lumens. My PAR20 bulbs had a published beam width of 40° on the packaging but I measured the cut off as 100° -- the renders looked much more realistic once I got that correct.

Zachary, I did some more experimentation and figured out how to get PBR to look good when the Sun is On. I revamped my post above with those details, so if you already started playing with the Test Plan, download the new one which has interior and exterior items and camera to show the inside/outside light balance. I look forward to seeing your renders after to try some of these tips. -Jon

In case anyone's interested, I documented the various default settings I changed to achieve my results above, and also included a test plan so people can rule out their graphics card if they're not getting the expected results. Please see this post: https://hometalk.chiefarchitect.com/topic/5020-physics-based-rendering-what-am-i-doing-wrong/?do=findComment&comment=26552

Zachary, I suspect you haven't changed a few key settings. Your graphics card could also be a factor. First, so we can rule out your graphics card, please download and test the attached test plan I exported which has a camera in it setup for good PBR. Here you can see there's clearly a difference between Standard and Physically Based: Here are the settings I suspect you haven't tuned: Adjust Lights Use Light Settings - This will ensure that all of your lights will be used as part of the render, as opposed to a subset (up to Maximum Lights) being automatically chosen by the software. Adjust Sunlight I previously would toggle the Sun Off since it overpowered my interior lights. I figured out I can adjust the Intensity of the Sun to create the right interior/exterior lighting balance depending on if i'm rendering an interior shot, exterior, day or night (a very low lux simulates the moon nicely). I've provided examples of interior and exterior shots at different Sun intensities at the end of this post. Edit Active Camera (on your PBR camera) You definitely want to enable Show Shadows and probably Reflections as well. Lastly you probably want to modify the Light Data for each of your lights. I modeled mine based on the PAR20 LED lights i'm using. I measured the Cut Off Angle from the real light, got the Lumens from the light packaging, and guesstimated the Drop Off Rate based on what looked like my lights: ...and, it should go without saying, that you need to add lights to your plan for any of this to work. Don't forget we now have this handy tool to select all of the similar items so you can edit all your lights at once: Also, just a reminder, if you always want the settings you changed above to take effect for new cameras, modify: Edit > Default Settings > Camera Tools > Full Camera While not mandatory, here are some other settings which affect the render for your reference: Edit > Preferences > Render Good luck, please let me know if this helps! -Jon Test Plan for Example Above: HDPro_2020-PBR_Test.zip Examples of Interior/Exterior Renders at different Sun Intensities: (pay attention to the difference of the light through the windows) 100,000 lux - 10,000 lux - 1,000 lux - 100 lux (nice balance for interior/exterior renders) - 10 lux - 2 lux (nice moonlight for interior render) - 1 lux - 0.1 lux (nice moonlight for exterior render) - 0.05 lux - Sun Toggled Off

Just to be more accurate, it's not "Ray Tracing" (which is also a feature in CA), but "PBR" (Physically based Rendering). PBR is near-real time (or real time if you have a really good graphics card) and can be live while you move around your plan. Ray Tracing can take hours for a single image. PBR seems to be a better option in most cases, with Ray Tracing probably being a good option for final-final renders for architects etc. - If i had to choose between having one or the other i'd choose PBR. I personally like the look of PBR even more than Ray Tracing in many cases. In full disclosure, i'm a novice at using both techniques, so maybe in the hands of an expert Ray Tracing can outshine PBR. But here are comparative screenshots of what my novice abilities were able to do with each technique: Chief Architect Interiors X11 (Trial) Ray Tracing Screenshot After 43 hours of processing. I accidentally left it running since friday, and it doesn't look much different than after the first couple of hours) Home Designer Pro 2020 Physically Based Screenshot This took seconds to render. I put zero thought and planning into either of these (other than setting up the light data for my recessed lights), and PBR did an amazing job.

The "Physically Based Rendering" (PBR) is amazing -- it's like having a totally different program. There's now a point to adding lights with tuned light data etc. Attached are some renders of an in-progress plan. I included an old-style "Standard" render for comparison. Best $99 I ever spent.

I'm excited that 2019 Suite/Arch/Pro will finally get access to Chief Architect Cloud. We'll be able to upload our 3D models there and then display them on the 3D Viewer mobile app. That alone is worth the upgrade IMHO. It also lets you specify the number of light sources used in 3D Views (no 8 light limit anymore). That should improve rendering quality for complex lighting setups.

The prior release dates: v2018 - 3/9/17 v2017 - 3/10/16 Amazon claims the downloadable version has bee available since Feb 13th and the boxed version will be released Mar 1st: https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Home+Designer+Pro+2019 So my guess is sometime this week or next we'll get an upgrade announcement.

In HD Pro 2018, how can I group CAD objects? I imported a DXF of a fixture and all of the geometry are separate lines, boxes etc. I just want it to be 1 big object. Sorry if this is a dumb question...

Holy cow. Why didn't I think of that? Just set the height of the cabinet to the thickness of the countertop! Brilliant! THANKS

I need to create a countertop-only base cabinet so I can place a sink on it. I saw this article but it doesn't seem to work on Pro: https://www.homedesignersoftware.com/support/article/KB-01077/creating-a-countertop-surface-for-a-laundry-room.html I saw this article but a custom countertop doesn't let me place a sink (non-freestanding) on it. Sinks want base cabinets. https://www.homedesignersoftware.com/support/article/KB-00983/creating-a-custom-shaped-countertop.html I can do the sink freestanding but I'd rather not so it's easier to move the counter around etc. Thanks

I double checked that, and I have my accuracy set to 3 decimal places. It's not that the dimensions are rounding, but rather when I resize certain objects they won't move at first, and then they'll extend by 1/16", and then they only extend in 1/16" increments. I checked that grid snap was off too. I'm at a loss. As a simple test, in a new plan, I cannot create a Shapes>Boxes>Closed with edges of 1.621". After I click OK, if I go back they're set to 1.625". I just want to know if that precision is possible for those objects, and if so, why my installation is snapping.

In HD Pro 2017, I noticed that certain objects like Shapes>Box>Closed and Soffits always round their dimensions to the nearest 1/16" (0.0625"). This happens when you either manually edit the dimensions or resize with the mouse. Other objects, like CAD Boxes and Slabs do not do this, and can have any arbitrary dimensions. Is the 1/16" rounding something I can control? I've looked at all of the snap/grid settings I am aware of but nothing seems to have any effect on it. Thanks.

Is there any way to get soffits which are within 3" of each other to not auto-extend and connect to each other?

Thanks... Just an update. The snapping issue appears to be with things snapping to Joists, not the box shape.

Eric, Thanks for the rapid help as always! The soffit wound up working better in other ways too, since the box shape didn't snap properly to other surfaces. Followup question - how do I get a soffit to be outlined with a solid line in plan view? Thanks, Jon